Mark Zuckerberg's Quest to Kill the Smartphone Could Have Some Scary Side Effects

In 2016, Mark Zuckerberg revealed his ambitious 10-year plan for the company, calling his shot for a future where artificial intelligence, virtual and augmented reality and ubiquitous connectivity are all core to the social network's strategy.

There are really two Facebooks: One, the social network that billions of people use to share baby photos and political opinions; and two, the future factory that's building autonomous helicopters, artificial brains and metaphysical selfie sticks.

Right now, they're still treated as very separate entities. When we talk about the effects of, say, fake news stories or so-called "filter bubbles" under the Trump administration, we're really talking about that first Facebook, the social network we're familiar with and how it informs our interactions with the real world.

Maybe it's time we stopped thinking like these two different Facebooks are different companies. After all, it seems like Facebook already has.

In 2016, Mark Zuckerberg revealed his ambitious 10-year plan for the company, calling his shot for a future where artificial intelligence, virtual and augmented reality and ubiquitous connectivity are all core to the social network's strategy.

Welcome to 2026

On the one hand, Facebook's vision of 2026 sounds kind of cool: As Facebook loves to point out, you'll no longer be limited to physical proximity if you want to spend time with anyone from all over the world; just meet them in virtual reality. And your McDonalds cashier could actually be an artificially-intelligent computer program, with a human-looking avatar beamed into the augmented reality glasses Facebook hopes you'll be wearing.

And as Zuckerberg himself noted at F8, it has the potential to replace every screen in your home, including the TV and, one day, the smartphone, as the combination of the digital and physical worlds replaces the need for an additional device. The eventual goal, he says, is for Facebook to build innocuous augmented reality glasses.

Facebook's 10-year roadmap, first revealed by Mark Zuckerberg in April 2016.

Image credit: Facebook

But Facebook had a lot of stumbles over the last year or so, which means this vision is worth taking a very close look at.

In the virtual reality world that Facebook is building, the company could actually control what we see and what we experience. Facebook's mysterious algorithms will be at work in ways we've never really experienced before, interfacing directly with our senses.

Mark Zuckerberg says that glasses like these are the ultimate goal of Facebook's augmented reality efforts.

Image credit: Facebook

In the short term, as Buzzfeed's Nitasha Tiku points out, this is going to make it even harder to tell fantasy from reality on social media: In a world of painstakingly-staged Instagram photos, augmented reality is going to make it even easier to present a version of your life that doesn't exist. As Zuckerberg says, "you can add a second coffee mug, so it looks like you’re not having breakfast alone.”

What happens if a Facebook glitch in augmented reality causes some people to become invisible in your field of vision? What if you start seeing people who aren't there? Or an audio error accidentally means you can only communicate in Tagalog until your reset your glasses?

What if a Facebook algorithm change means that people who disagree with you are literally rendered invisible?

It's a weird, science-fictional thing to worry about, but it's increasingly a weird, science-fictional sort of world. Remember that Facebook, once thought about as a toy, is now so crucial to the dialogue that we're talking about its role in global politics. With virtual reality and augmented reality, Facebook is hoping to repeat the trick.

Image credit: Microsoft HoloLens

Facebook deserves at least a little credit here. Zuckerberg hasn't always been perfect when it comes to matters of social responsibility and giving, as evidenced by the difficulty the Newark schools had in taking full advantage of his $100 million donation. But his heart seems to be mostly in the right place, and he's definitely put his money where his mouth is with the Zuckerberg-Chan charity initiative, where he vowed to give 99 percent of his fortune to social causes. There are worse people to lead the charge into an algorithmically-defined reality.

Still, Zuckerberg won't be in control of Facebook forever. If he leaves or dies, his super-voting powers do not transfer to his heirs; the company's investors have seen to that. So, as Facebook enters the third stage of its ambitious 10-year plan, here's my fondest wish: While we argue about the role of Facebook in our lives today, I'd love for the company to really think -- and talk -- about the role it might play tomorrow.